Tokyo. Hai.

Posted by Patrick under Tokyo Summer Vacation

Tomorrow morning Andrea and I are going to Japan for our summer vacation!

It’s our first trip to Asia, and will be an exercise in cultural understanding. Andrea will be working the cultural anthropology angle during this trip, and I’ll be seeking to understand beer culture in Tokyo.

On a somewhat related, I’ve been talking about upgrading the blogging gear for a while now, and this trip to Asia seemed like a good reason to do so. For one, Japan is on a different mobile phone standard than North American CDMA and the rest of the world’s GSM implementation. But is still compatible with next-generation (”3G”) networks like Europe that use UMTS technology.

Now that your head stopped spinning — the bottom line is I can’t blog from Japan with the Treo 600. It won’t work. So meet my new blogging device: the SonyEricsson p990i.

It’s a serious upgrade from the venerable Treo: 2 megapixel camera built into the phone, and has a flash (no more crappy Zapruder-esque photos!); it works in almost every country in the world; has built-in wi-fi ability (hello cheap internet on the go); and will even act as a GPS navigation system with the $45 add-on GPS receiver I got last night.

How appropriate that a gadget geek like me is going to one of the world’s preminent gadget emporia? Marry that with the beer-dispensing vending machines found almost everywhere, and this will be one interesting trip. Updates will likely happen at odd times since Tokyo is 13 hours ahead of Eastern time, but there should be plenty to follow.

Sayonara for now!